Mr. Cohen is arch, and archness can chafe.
He was not a titan, but "a small-scale artist" who had produced "laboured and pretentious" large works and whose shorter ones gave off "a cloying sweetness and archness".
It can also be nihilistic: archness as a perpetual defence against the vulnerability of being sincere.
Anyone who has swooned over records by 10cc or Steely Dan (for the tunes rather than the archness) will be gratified to hear this.
One is that, while Millett was publicly cast in the polarizing role of polemicist, there is often in her tone the cool, controlled archness of the literary essayist, a role she might easily have inhabited had the times not called upon her to do otherwise.
The writing I have come across seems not just fictional but false; there's a lazy archness to the tone, a superficial intelligence, and a mere pose of thoughtfulness — all of which may be intentional, part of the joke.
There was something a little forced in July's previous work, "Me and You and Everyone We Know" (2005), and hints of archness linger in "The Future"; now and then, we hear from Paw Paw himself, who addresses us in what must, regrettably, be called a mew-over.
The sitcom doesn't preserve much of Huang's archness.
We recommend an acting coach to vary the tone and modulate the archness of his delivery.
Although Dahl was known for archness, even cruelty — remember Violet Beauregarde, in Willy Wonka's factory, blowing up into a huge blueberry — the new book seemed unusually savage.
He has a tendency to identify figures fully only when they're making a second or third appearance in his text, and he has a low resistance to archness ("She perpetually set Muriel's teeth on edge but this was not the reason for Muriel spending large sums on dental surgery").
